This will be the first of four posts with my initial thoughts. I’m dividing the nineteen award categories into written fiction works (novel, novella, novelette, short story, young adult book), other individual works (related work, graphic story, long form dramatic presentation, short form dramatic presentation), people categories (short form editor, long form editor, professional artist, fan writer, fan artist, new writer), and serial categories (series, semiprozine, fanzine, fancast).

Best Novel

The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)

Four of these were on my nomination ballot, and I only have one left to read. The one I’ve read but didn’t nominate was The City in the Middle of the Night. I went in with high hopes since I loved All the Birds in the Sky. There’s some interesting worldbuilding, but the main character frustrated the heck out of me.

The one I still need to read is Gideon the Ninth. I’ve seen a lot of buzz, but it didn’t really sound like my sort of thing. Although I liked her story “The Deepwater Bride” enough to nominate it a few years ago, and I wouldn’t have thought that was my sort of thing either. I decide to wait and see if it made the ballot and here it is!

Of the four I nominated, my favorite is The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I also went into this with high hopes from “A Witch’s Guide to Escape,” and my expectations were exceeded. The other three are going to be really tough to rank. I remember thinking I was glad I didn’t need to for nominations. Now I’ll have to decide.

This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Saga Press; Jo Fletcher Books)

To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager; Hodder & Stoughton)

Of these, I’ve read five and nominated two. McGuire’s Wayward Children novellas continue to delight me, and this one probably stands on its own the best so far. I loved To Be Taught, If Fortunate as much as her Wayfarers books, although it’s unconnected to that series. I’m leaning toward the later, but I may have to flip a coin to decide between them.

The Deep very nearly made my nomination ballot. I feel like I wanted to like it a little more than I did, but it’s definitely thought-provoking. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 was good but didn’t stand out from the other novellas I read. I would love to see more in that setting though. This Is How You Lose the Time War seemed like it was probably a ton of fun for the authors to write, but it just didn’t do it for me. I know I’m in the extreme minority here.

The only one I haven’t read is “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom.” Right now I’m number 123 on the waitlist for the six digital copies of Exhalation at my library! Here’s hoping that this and the Best Novelette finalist from Chiang’s collection are included in the Hugo Voters Packet because I doubt I’ll get it in time. I also put a hold on the physical copy, but that will depend on when the library is able to reopen.

Here I have two more nominees and two more to read. It’s dogs vs. cats between my nominees “Away With the Wolves” and “For He Can Creep.” Sorry cat lovers, I’ve always been more of a dog person. Really great characterization in both though.

“The Archronology of Love” was on my longlist. It was moving and has an interesting premise. “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye” was fun, wacky, and horrifying! But didn’t stand out as much for me as Pinsker’s stories have in previous years.

I still need to read “Omphalos” if I can get my hands on Exhalation. Fortunately I’ll be able to access Emergency Skin through my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Best Short Story

“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, by Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons, 9 September 2019)

“As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang (Tor.com, 23 October 2019)

“Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, 24 July 2019)

“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen (Nightmare Magazine, May 2019)

I’ve read all of these except the one from Nightmare, but none were on my nomination ballot. Of the five I’ve read, my favorite is “Do Not Look Back, My Lion” with some fascinating worldbuilding. They’re all good, but rather brutal. I look forward to reading the story by Nibedita Sen since she is also a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book

Catfishing on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen)

Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan)

Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee (Disney/Hyperion)

Minor Mage, by T. Kingfisher (Argyll)

Riverland, by Fran Wilde (Amulet)

The Wicked King, by Holly Black (Little, Brown; Hot Key)

I nominated four of these, and I have two left to read. It looks like Deeplight won’t be available here in the US until next week. I really liked T. Kingfisher’s previous Best YA Book finalist in the first year of the award, so I imagine I’ll enjoy Minor Mage too. It will be hard enough to rank the ones I nominated here, and I don’t think adding these two will make it any easier.

There are two other non-Hugo awards included on the Hugo Ballot. They are nominated and voted on by the same people, they are awarded at the Hugo Ceremony, but the recipients don’t take home a shiny rocket trophy.

Appearing for the first time this year is the Award for Best Young Adult Book:

A book published for young adult readers in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during 2017.

Attempts to create a Young Adult Hugo were unsuccessful for many years because it really wasn’t compatible with the other word-count based fiction categories. Finally, they decided to create a seperate award administered with the Hugos, but not a Hugo itself. Therefore, becoming a finalist for this award does not prevent a work from being eligible for the Hugo category its word-count would qualify it for.

The name Lodestar is up for ratification at this year’s Business Meeting. If approved, it would go into effect for 2019. However, a proposal to name it after Ursula K. Le Guin instead is also going to be brought up at that time. Online reaction doesn’t look good for this. But if those in attendance at the Business Meeting do decide to change the name to this or something else altogether, it would undoubtedly cause the award to remain nameless for another year until the new one is ratified.

While I can appreciate the desire to honor Le Guin, I think an award for women writers and/or feminist writing would be more applicable to her legacy. Also, I feel it is disrespectful to everyone involved in the long and careful process that went into selecting the Lodestar name to suggest a change at this late date. At the same time, this seems like a rush to name something after her now that she’s no longer with us.

I had several things lined up to read for this category, but just didn’t get to them in time to nominate anything. I look forward to seeing what does make the finalist list.

The other non-Hugo category is the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer:

A writer whose first work of science fiction or fantasy appeared in a professional publication during 2016 or 2017.

This award is sponsored by Dell Magazines, publisher of Analog, and named in memory of the magazine’s long-time, influential editor. Originally presented in 1973, one of the finalists who lost to Jerry Pournelle that first year was a young George R. R. Martin.

Again I didn’t get to everything I had planned to look at for this, but I was able to find new writers to nominate from works I’d already read. There is a page at the Writertopia.org site which maintains a list of eligible writers. And Rocket Stack Rank also makes note of eligible short fiction writers. Here are the authors I nominated with at least one of the works which I read by them:

Today’s the day we find out who this year’s finalists are! Live announcements are taking place at 3 pm EDT (UTC−04:00), and a video announcement will be posted at Worldcon76.org approximately one hour later.